


Alma, Alma

by kashinoha



Category: Leverage
Genre: Entire Series Spoilers, dream seer!Hardison, empath!Hardison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-01
Updated: 2016-09-01
Packaged: 2018-08-12 07:27:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7925893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kashinoha/pseuds/kashinoha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He invades people’s privacy for a living. It’s not like he needs to invade their minds. </p><p>That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t, though.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alma, Alma

 

**Alma, Alma  
**

All characters © Chris Downey and John Rogers

 

 

He’s twelve, in the raging throes of puberty, when he falls asleep at his desk too late on a school night and dreams his Nana’s dreams.

It only happens with people close to him, or who live in the same house; Hardison’s not really sure how it works. But just as well. He has no desire to see what random people get kinky about after they’ve eaten too much pizza before bed (George Lucas being an exception because that man is fucking gold and anybody who disagrees, in Hardison’s good opinion, deserves dial-up for the rest of their lives).

It’s not some Stephen King Shining shit, but it’s pretty damn close, and it takes Hardison a year before he learns how to shut it off.

Nana always knows what to do. She tells him that this sometimes happens with empaths, that they occasionally gain the ability to see into dreams. Her mama had it, and she’s pretty sure her Irish Setter had it, so she teaches Hardison about focus and distraction and meditation until Hardison fools himself that he’s somewhat normal again.

He quits the violin, discovers the wonders of cybercrime, and names all the ATMs in his city, because they’re his bros now and Hardison’s also fooled himself that his fascination with hacking inanimate objects is purely coincidental because there is _no_ link whatsoever between a computer and the human subconscious, thank you very much.

He falls in love with the Pentagon servers (because what teenager wouldn’t) and after a while, he almost forgets that he can see other people’s dreams.

Until one day Nathan Ford asks him to steal some airplane blueprints.

 

 

 

And so begins Alec Hardison’s Ethical Crisis of 2008. The financial crisis has nothing on this, especially since Hardison saw _that_ shitstorm coming from a mile away and it’s somehow not as interesting as the four, very odd people he now finds himself working with.

He is first tempted with Parker. Twenty pounds of crazy, you know. And after Belgrade, Hardison almost does. Almost.

See, there’s always been a _can_ and a _could,_ but never a _should._ He’s seldom been close enough with anybody to warrant wavering morality, which is why it takes Hardison by surprise when he's brushing his teeth one morning and comes to the realization that he is conflicted over prying into the dreams of his teammates. Privacy is little more than a toy to him, and people shouldn't be _conflicted_ about playing with their toys. Right?

Hardison tells himself that it is wrong. He already knows everything he needs to know about people. That’s what the internet is for. He invades people’s privacy for a living. Invading their minds would be overkill, and Eliot Spencer is not someone Hardison particularly wants angry with him.

Plus, he isn’t lying when he tells Nate he doesn’t like mind games. There’s enough shit going on in their heads without some Nosy Nancy poking around in there, changing the locks and rewriting the code like an asshole (even though technically _they_ are the assholes, grade-A, but with the marks it is somehow okay).

So he doesn’t, for a while. But he wants to; it nags him like an itch in the middle of his back. Instead, Hardison distracts himself with software, working on a British accent, anything, until even his own sleep is exhausted and dreamless.

 

 

 

He first tries with Nate.

Which is a really fucking bad idea because the guy is at best disturbingly morbid in the daytime. What goes on at night is infinitely worse. Hardison makes it to the bathroom of his too-big apartment before he dry heaves twice, before he remembers he didn’t have any kids, before he realizes he hasn’t lost everything because he’s had nothing to start with, and that’s okay.

Strangely, it doesn’t push him away. He spends more time with Nate after that, sometimes staring into the creases in the other man’s brow that seem permanently etched there. The ones he can’t erase with a backspace button.

It doesn’t push him away, but it does keep him from looking for a while. It isn’t until after the Michelangelo that he tries with Sophie, gently. Because out of all of them, she’s only about ten pounds of crazy which is, let's face it, passable in Hardison’s book of subconscious voyeurism.

Sophie dreams in the languages that she knows. Her dreams are about transformation, shapeshifting. Hardison learns that she is not afraid of falling because the only difference between falling and flying is what direction you’re headed.

In a way Sophie’s like him. She gets into people’s heads, down to the nitty-gritty benthos of human consciousness, reaching her fingers into the dirt of the riverbed and playing with it. In a way Sophie’s _not_ like him, in that she digs for it. Hardison just watches and feels their feelings, because when he watches they’re his dreams, too.

“Oh, these silly things?” Dream-Sophie says to him, once. Or a version of him, because they can never actually see _him._ Sophie plucks a black feather from the wings on her back and twirls it around her fingers like she would a cigar. “I’m waiting, you know.”

“For what?” asks that Hardison, and tries not to notice that she is naked under the feathers.

“Nate,” Sophie replies, with a sad little smile. “He hasn’t grown his yet.”

There is a color like desire pulsing under her dreams like kinks in a rug. Hardison has known on some level, since the beginning, that Sophie longs to be loved. To be laid bare and accepted for what’s underneath. But mostly Sophie dreams of freedom.

It is a couple years before Hardison gets that they're really one and the same thing.

 

 

 

_Eliot pushes hair and sticky sweat from his face and sighs heavily through his nose, taking a few minutes to deepen his breathing._

_He’s almost there when the tinny, shrill ring of his cell phone nearly has him grappling for his gun, the switchblade lodged in his pillow, anything. He has to suck in another huge breath before he can say for certain he won’t throw the phone across the room._

_And yet, somehow, the call is welcome._

_He puts up a front anyway, barking, “What?” like he doesn't know who it is. There are only two people on the planet that can wake him up and live to talk about it._

_Not that he had been sleeping, exactly, but that is beside the point._

“Are you awake?” _Hardison asks. His voice is a low and quiet murmur, different from his normal speaking voice. In that moment, Eliot is thankful for it._

_“I’m—“Eliot pinches the bridge of his nose, where there’s a small healing bandage from a scuffle last week. He sighs. “Yeah. What’s wrong?”_

_Hardison hesitates over the line._ “Nothing, man.”

_Eliot glares at his clock blearily. “Then why are you calling me at three in the damn morning?” he growls._

“Look,” _says Hardison,_ “I just wanted to let you know that I’m right here, man.”

 _“I..._ What?”

 _Hardison sounds awkward._ “Me ‘n Parker,” _he replies, slowly._ “We’re, uh, safe, y’know. It’s all good.”

 _It’s not the first time Hardison has done this, made what Eliot refers to as “status update” calls in the middle of the night. They’re not as frequent since Nate and Sophie left, but every few months there will be a night when Eliot’s phone will ring with Hardison checking in for no apparent reason. Sometimes it’s about random things or reminders or just to say hello. He has no idea why Hardison does this, or how the fuck the guy manages to do it exactly when Eliot, admittedly, needs it. But in a world where chicks can do speed calculus in their heads and dudes can go through eight liters of orange soda and five bags of gummy frogs a week and_ not _go into a diabetic coma, Eliot’s learned not to ask._

_“Go to bed, Hardison,” Eliot says, sounding tired. The strange thing is, he’s not mad. In fact, he actually feels better. Like maybe he can go back to sleep, for once.  
_

_Hardison yawns, loud and fake enough to make Eliot roll his eyes._ “Aight,” _he says._ “Nighty-night.”

 _“Hardison,” Eliot adds, and swallows against the roughness in his throat. “Thanks.” Because he somehow knows that Hardison_ knows, _crazy as it sounds._

“Don’t mention it,” _says Hardison, and Eliot can hear his smile over the phone._

 

 

 

Sometimes Hardison tries and can’t see what Eliot is dreaming at all. It confuses him until he realizes, after the first couple of months, that it’s because Eliot is not sleeping. He manages to catch the snaps of dreams Eliot has when the guy does conk out, and Hardison does not like what he sees. Contrary to what Hardison suspected, they’re not violent. Which is somehow worse.

Eliot’s dreams are of things that could have been. They are wedges from his life, only in these the door opens and his father invites him inside, his bullets miss, the fallen get up and brush dust from their shirts. Weddings. Kids. Riding a Palomino bareback in an open field under a spiral sun.

There’s a longing, a searching there that makes Hardison grind his teeth and swipe at his eyes. Eliot never needs anything, but that’s not true, really.

“You won’t tell?” says Eliot, hushed, sitting on a desert rock, whittling away at a piece of bone with a shiv.

They always ask him questions.

“Tell what?” Dream-Hardison probes, annoyed because he always seems to be in uniform, in Eliot’s dreams.

“The warehouse,” Eliot says quietly. “Moreau’s men. There were twenty-two of them.”

“I—“Hardison swallows, feeling strangely cold for not having a body. “I won’t tell. Promise.”

“Okay,” says Eliot. A thin trickle of blood makes its way down his nose, over his lip. He smiles serenely around it. There’s sunshine in his hair.

The worst thing Eliot’s done, Hardison knows it. Even without his Seeing, it wasn’t hard to guess. _“Extinguish the whole family, like we usually do.”_   Eliot dreams about that a lot. Eliot dreams of the dead.

 

 

 

_“Ow!”_

_“I don’t like psychics,” Parker snaps, and pokes Hardison’s shoulder again._

_“I’m not—ow!_ Woman—“ _Hardison shrinks away from her surprisingly (or not so surprisingly) strong finger. “I’m not a psychic,” he exclaims._

_Parker folds her arms. “Then how did you know I wanted to go on a Ferris wheel today?”_

_“Just a guess? I dunno, Parker, I was walkin’ by the football field the other day and I saw this kid with a balloon and it made me think of amusement parks with the clowns and the rides n’ stuff—“_

_“Alright,” Parker says, dangling her sneakers over the loveseat, unconvinced, “then what am I thinking right now?”_

_“Uhhh…you want more cotton candy.”_

_Parker looks relieved. “I was thinking it’s nice up here,” she tells him softly. The afternoon sun is slowly but surely sinking into the horizon, turning the trees orange and the shadows red. “It’s like you can see the whole world.”_

_Hardison smiles. “Portland, at least.”_

_“We could take over the world,” Parker offers. She looks into the distance, eyes narrowed. “Yeah, let’s do that.”_

_“We could, you know,” says Hardison, half-serious. He leans back, crosses his arms, and adds, “You be Pinky, I’ll be The Brain—“_

_“And Eliot can be Pharfignewton!” Parker finishes._

_Hardison’s eye twitches. “The horse? Seriously?” Actually, it makes sense. He grins._

_“Babe, we can take over the world anytime you want. We can replace all the stairs with bungee cords and have cereal for dinner every night. Hell, we can have a Ferris wheel in your backyard.”_

_With a little half-smile, Parker tosses her ponytail over one shoulder. “What about a chocolate fountain in the living room? You know I dream about that kind of thing,” she says, playing with the ends of her hair._

_In the distance, the sun touches the horizon._

_“I know,” Hardison says._

 

 

 

Parker’s actually the last one he tries. He waits with her, because she needs time. He waits, only peeking here or there until she says she wants pretzels with broken glass between her fingers and her bangs in her eyes.   

The first thing he figures out is that Parker has a recurring nightmare. It's always the same, even if the settings or the people are different and Hardison almost leaves right then and there because he gets it, he really does. Parker has an urgent message to relay to somebody, anybody, but no matter how hard she tries she cannot seem to speak English and no one can understand her.

Instead of phoning in the middle of the night like he does with Eliot, Hardison will nudge her gently the next morning and say, "Tell me about that safe you were working on," or, "I forget, what did you do with that Matisse in Rio again?" Then he'll simply listen.

However when she's not dreaming about that, Parker’s dreams are like math. But also nonlinear and at times downright ridiculous. Archie and Sophie, or versions of them at least, often appear as guides: parent figures, sages, sometimes aliens or talking animals that Parker calls Sophie and Archie even if they couldn't look anything less like Sophie and Archie.

There are also too many doors. Safes from decades past with thick, metal vaults and combination locks that click toy-piano music. Archie and Sophie look at them with something like sadness.

The Hardison she’s dreamed up tonight is dressed as Santa. Out of all of them, she’s the only one who’s gotten his eyes right. Parker is fiddling with a Glen Reader that appears to be shrinking and ignores him, for the most part. That Hardison tries to say something, but Parker shushes him.

“Ignore the distractions,” she mutters to herself. “Work the problem.”

Hardison watches as she opens the tiny safe, revealing piles of stuffed animals. Even though the safe is now too small to reach inside, Parker does anyway and takes out a threadbare rabbit. It’s hemorrhaging cotton from a torn seam along its side.

“I found Bunny,” she tells Hardison.

“Were you looking for him?” Hardison asks.

Parker frowns, her face scrunching up. “I’m not sure,” she says.

Hardison likes Parker’s dreams. Everything is random, yet somehow makes perfect sense. But they are also kind of sad in a way, like Eliot’s, as if something is missing. There is thunder in Parker’s dreams, and wind that whistles over the mountains.

Or maybe it’s just the growl of a hungry stomach and a sigh of loneliness.

 

 

 

They all dream of normalcy; typical, apple-pie halcyon lives that they both loathe and long for. Hardison wakes up from these with an ache of nostalgia in his chest that’s not always his. On those mornings he calls his Nana, knowing she’ll just be sitting down to her tea and hash-brown breakfast, wearing her pink bathrobe and matching slippers.

 _“You sound good,”_ Nana tells him.

“Are you kidding me?” says Hardison. “Yesterday I had to, uh—“he clears his throat, trying to find a polite way of saying _had to_ _rappel down a thirty-story building while impersonating a security guard,_ but you know how it is.

“Work is stressful,” he finishes, somewhat lamely. He can hear Nana laughing quietly on the other end.

 _“Alec,”_ she says, _“correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that how you like it?”_

And it’s true, sort of. Hardison scratches an eyebrow and says, “Yeah, but my co-workers are pains in my ass.” That part is also true. There’s another pain in his ass, but Hardison thinks that’s just from the harness.

 _“You like them,”_ says Nana. It’s not exactly a question.

“They’re alright, I guess,” Hardison admits, shrugging. “Kinda strange, y’know, but they’re good at their jobs.”

Nana sounds somewhat amused. _“Strange isn’t a problem for you.”_

Hardison swallows, because he knows what she means. “I don’t really—I try not to do, uh, _that,”_ he says. He pauses for a beat. “But sometimes it happens. You think I shouldn’t?”

 _“You give them what they need,”_ replies Nana. _“That’s how it’s always been, Alec.”_

“And what if they don’t want it?” asks Hardison, biting his lip.

It sounds like Nana is smiling when she speaks again. _“If you can’t, who else can?”_

Hardison doesn’t really know what to say to that, so he says goodbye and hangs up. He stares at the screen of his phone feeling lighter, somehow.

 

 

 

So he looks. Sometimes it’s like a circus show. Random details exhumed from the murky dregs of the subconscious that tell the dreaming mind it’s perfectly rational to have. Like that time Eliot dreams of eating a snake heart because Gordon Ramsay says it’s the proper sacrifice to get onto _Hell’s Kitchen._ Real popcorn-movie stuff.

Sometimes it’s silly, when they dream of him, making Hardison snigger into his pillow while at the same time being mildly offended.

Sometimes it’s Hardison wearing something ridiculous or caricaturist, the way archetypes in dreams always seem to be (he’s still iffy about that time Parker dreamt him as Rudolph, with Nate as Santa and Sophie as Mrs. Clause and Eliot an elf). Talk about metaphors.

Sometimes they have the “typical” nightmares too: Eliot showing up his first day as sous-chef buck-ass nude save for a bandanna, or Sophie being handcuffed in a police station (she was telling the truth when she claimed that was a recurring nightmare of hers), or Parker asked to sing _La Traviata_ at a school talent show.

Sometimes Hardison will be sitting in front of his laptop and he’ll suddenly burst into uncontrollable chuckles, imagining Parker running around onstage trying to act out a dramatic opera death. Eliot might look over at him from the couch as if he’s gone completely Section Eight.

When this happens, Hardison only flashes a grin. He knows what they are afraid of, and he knows what they have forgotten.

Hardison never tells them he knows their dreams. There are times when he feels dirty, like he did when he used to hack his school’s office servers to watch pornos. One night he sees Archie teaching a young Parker how to braid her hair. Nate covering his ears and laughing as his son blows into a trumpet, cheeks ballooning out like Dizzy Gillespie. Eliot plinking at a guitar with a scratch down one side, pencil and staff paper beside his bare feet with a half-scribbled composition. And he feels uncomfortable because it’s somehow more private or intimate than any porno Hardison has ever seen.

So he only peeks when he feels he needs to. Sometimes their minds are a mess, and sometimes they aren’t.

Hardison discovers, with some surprise, that he loves them either way (just don’t be dressing him up as some damn reindeer).

 

 

 

Nate’s putting on his best suit. Glassy, polished Oxfords, fourteen carat cuff links, and a half Windsor at his neck. His tie is patterned with the Queen of Hearts.

Hardison peers over Nate’s shoulder, into the mirror, and whistles.

“Bruh, is _that_ what you see?”

“Every damn day,” Nate mutters.

“Try my eyes,” says Hardison, because yeah, his dream versions can be weird like that.

They swap eyes.

“Better?”

Nate smiles into the mirror. “Much,” he replies. “Don't suppose I can keep them?”

Hardison wrinkles his nose. “No, because then _I’d_ have to look at you and that all’s _nasty._ Do you think the Queen wants them?”

They debated for some time on who would take Nate’s eyes, eventually coming to an impasse.

“I’m going to be late,” Nate says. “Can I have my eyes back? Brown—it’s, it’s _nice,_ you know, but it doesn’t really suit me.”

“Maybe I should change the mirror, then,” Hardison mutters. “I can do that, y’know. I just need the right password.”

Nate shakes his head. “It’s not the mirror,” he says, and claps Hardison on the shoulder. “Good to know you don’t see the world as I do. I like how you see me.”

“Yeah, but when will _you_ like how you see you?”

“Hmm.” Nate frowns, like he does when he’s pretending he doesn’t know the answer.

 

 

 

Sophie, feeling caged, leaves for a while. Tara gives them a whole new bowl of tasty adventures, from fashion shows to jewel thefts. They even meet a “psychic,” and Hardison wants to laugh.  He’d know a psychic if he saw one. They have a certain...off-ness to them. It’s a look.

When the team first met, Hardison said he couldn’t hack a guy’s head. That was only half true. He never, ever watches the dreams of marks. Even if he could, which is rare, they are all the same anyway. Money, power, sex. Sad, twisted things that cower and cringe in yellow shadows under swollen moons. Yawn.

Rand is insulting on so many levels. Hardison can know everything about anybody he chooses. That’s what his tech is for, and the Seeing is just a bonus. He knows though, that when genuine, Seeing is a gift that must be taken and used with the utmost care (y’know, when he’s not breaking the law).

Up until now, he's only gathered snatches and pieces of Parker's brother from buried dreams, because Parker's done her best to forget and her best is better than most people's. After the show Eliot bristles, provoked and selflessly angry, but it's Hardison who sees red. In his opinion, Rand doesn't deserve that information. He hasn't _earned_ it.

Hardison doesn’t need to See into Dalton Rand to personally destroy the man. It’s starting to scare him a little, how protective he’s getting of his team. But like his Nana always said, just roll with it.

The next night he takes a look into Parker’s dreams, just to check up, and finds her as a librarian. Instead of books, the library is simply filled with shelf after shelf of money and there are chocolate bars stacked in neat little columns at the teller’s desk.

Hardison smiles.

 

 

 

Their dreams are their Roman Rooms, and Hardison has the master key.

“Don’t get cocky,” Nate tells him on occasion, because even after being kidnapped by the Russian mob Hardison still doesn’t seem to get it. Figures.

And yeah, sometimes he has to be careful. Say Eliot dreams of making the perfect sandwich, and the next morning Hardison goes out and stocks the fridge with dill and mayo and fresh rye. Which has happened before. Or, Hardison might catch himself humming a tune that was in Nate’s head and Nate might look at him funny.

Other times it’s helpful, like when he knows Parker’s had a bad night and can avoid any trigger words. Or mentioning something to Nate that Nate doesn’t know he’s forgotten. The Christmas Gift Conundrum is instantly solved (and thank fucking god because shoe-shopping for Sophie is a _lot_ harder than it looks).

“You can't do what I do,” Nate also tells him on occasion, and it takes Hardison a while before he realizes that Nate means it as a compliment. And Nate's right; what Hardison does is watch, whether from a screen or REM eyes. And that takes heart in a way that the others can't imagine.

The only thing is, as much as he wants to, he can’t _change_ their dreams. He mostly wants to with Eliot’s, because the majority of Eliot’s PTSD manifests at night, when he thinks he is alone. Eliot’s real good at looking normal in the morning, like he hasn’t woken in the night with sweat on his pillow, gripping the katana Nate gave him under his mattress. He gives Hardison a look sometimes, on those mornings when Hardison quietly asks, “Hey, you alright man?” because there’s no way Hardison could possibly know. But whatever.

Time changes their dreams for him. Hardison lies back on his pillow, watching Nate’s Netflix until he falls asleep, and thinks of how they’ve changed over the years.

Eliot’s nightmares now are of the team, of not being able to save them. Or killing them; those are the bad ones when Eliot can’t quite hide the red snaps in his eyes the next morning. It’s how Hardison knows, when Eliot says he never thinks about him and Parker, that Eliot is lying.

Over time Nate’s dreams become calmer, less violent. They aren’t particularly imaginative, but they are linear and somehow satisfying.

On good nights, Eliot dreams more of his garden. Of planting and growing things. His flowers have names that don’t exist and his vegetables are sweet. He also dreams of them.

Parker dreams more of connection. Of touching, laughing, running fingers through spring grass. It’s actually Parker who suggests Tokyo, though she doesn’t remember it.

Sophie’s dreams are more settled, warm and comfortable like fondue and foot rubs in the sand.

Sometimes they simply dream in colors or numbers or a single word (except Nate, who dreams in black and white), just a murmur to be forgotten, swallowed by the liminal hours of the dawn.

 

 

 

Olivia Sterling is like him.

She has something different, something he can’t exactly place. But Hardison spots it immediately. Like he said, it’s a look. He can’t tell the others.

Instead, he makes it a priority to avoid the mini-Sterling during their mercifully brief sojourn in Dubai because that look goes both ways. She might know too, if she sees him.

 

 

 

He’s the first to say no to the White Rabbit. It’s too dangerous, Hardison says. We’re not God, Hardison says. But does Nate listen to him? No siree.

So he rolls with it, like his Nana always said, and plans a con he already knows is doomed to fail. He buys a trick disco ball and gives Sophie some pointers on guided dream therapy. Sophie knows a disturbing amount about dream psychology, it turns out.

What’s even more disturbing is the fact that Eliot taught himself how to _make_ dreams. Hardison tries not to think of what he could see with that cocktail, if he used it.

“It’s almost like you’ve done this before,” Sophie remarks, as he’s tinkering with one of the projectors on the virtual set. Hardison calls it the Dreamnasium, which is kind of a joke because he _is_ the White Rabbit. Relatively speaking.

“Uh, Sims?” he supplies, swallowing hard against a lump in his throat. They think he’s okay with it but in reality (hah) he knows people can’t be pushed like this—it’s why he can only _see_ dreams, not create or manipulate them.

“Let’s go steal a dream,” says Nate, like it’s a potato or a painting or Congress. Hardison nods like he’s not the only one who knows how terrifying it is to be in a lucid dream. For a minute, he reconsiders his past policy on prying into the dreams of marks, just so the others won’t have to.

But then Eliot has to wear the silly costume for once, and Hardison forgets all about it (at least until the mark tries to take a dive off the roof). _Inception_ this ain’t.   

When it’s all said and done, the experience makes Hardison more grateful than ever that he’s just a spectator. And he was wrong; he’s not the White Rabbit—the White Rabbit doesn’t get pulled in himself.

“Sweet dreams,” Parker says to him that night, leaning against his shoulder so Hardison can smell the faint tea tree scent of her shampoo.

The thing is, he’s kind of happy to be wrong, this time.

 

 

 

He knows Nate plans on leaving even before Nate does.

”You don’t seem very surprised,” Nate tells him. It’s two in the morning, and the desktop light casts a steady glow on his face. Hardison knows Nate is starting to, for the first time, dream in color.

He knows where all of their safe houses are. He knows what that small envelope of cash labeled _Diamond_ under Nate's bed is for now. He knows where Nate is going, or at least where Nate wants to go.

So he helps Nate with the Black Book and when Nate’s not looking secures a wedding venue in the Irish countryside, because the man deserves a happy ending. Sophie too. Hardison sets up the accounts, browses safe houses on the net, and thinks of doing the same for him and Parker (and maybe Eliot, because let’s face it, they need to eat).

He also thinks of his own happy ending, waiting for him behind the horizon.

He thinks of Eliot, who looks a little more rested in the mornings. He thinks of Parker, who has someone to wake up with so she’s not alone in the dark. He thinks of what they have become, when they close their eyes.

And he thinks that in some ways he’s changed their dreams after all.

He also thinks about how the three of them are going to change the world. He thinks of the people like him, of his Nana’s Nana, of one day finding Olivia Sterling. And not just to spite her father; Hardison often catches himself wondering what she’s become, too.

“Let’s steal the world,” Eliot says one afternoon while he’s making lunch, the Black Book hard drive resting on the counter next to a bowl of tossed pear salad, chuckling like he’s made the funniest joke ever.

Instead of thinking “what a dork,” Hardison shares a glance with Parker and they all start laughing because in a way, they’ve already stolen it.

There’s the world of dreams, Hardison thinks, and the world of what those dreams become.

Parker and Eliot, Hardison knows them. Knows the things they have left behind, and the things they haven’t. He knows their horrors, the parts that dine on shadows and poke at the light. But, when the day is done, he also knows their hearts.

And for that, he gives them his.

 

_End._


End file.
